Sunday, September 10, 2006

NFL: In-Progress Comments!

For those of you who have bothered to check the blog today (Sunday afternoon), I'd like to simply invite you to use the Comments section to provide your in-progress (quasi-live-blog-ish) commentary about what's happening on this first Sunday of games... Reactions? Surprises? Whatever you want. -- D.S.

49 comments:

Oh, let me start, and normally I have a rule: No one wants to hear about your fantasy team in particular. (General fantasy-related observations? Love 'em.)

I'm going to break it, because I think that I'm a cautionary tale: I didn't check the news this morning (I had to leave the house in a hurry), so I missed that TJ Housh's "probable" or "questionable" was switched to "not playing."

Meanwhile, Dante Stallworth was on my bench, and OF COURSE he has a TD and 100-plus receiving yards in his Eagles debut. Of course he does...

The lesson (bringing this back to the level of the universal): CHECK THE INJURY REPORTS RIGHT UP UNTIL YOUR ROSTER DEADLINES. Arrgh!

Well, I lost Big Ben for week 1, and had Favre and McNair on the bench.

McNair has gained good points today, though.

On a general note, the AFC North is looking vicious after one week. Cincy rolling (even with a subpar Palmer day), Baltimore rolling (decent offense, Defense looks back in full force) and Pittsburgh (impressive without their starting QB) NFC, on the other hand, doesn' tlook so good. Tampa Bay..Seattle..ouch.

My apartment doesn't face south, so I can't get directTV, so I was stuck watching just the nfl.com play-by-play of the Bills game...they just shut down, the run defense got trampled, but Losman looked pretty good, anyone know if the stats match up with reality there?

Its always a promising start to the season when the boo-birds come out at halftime [Cleveland]. Whatever bottom-level announcing team we had gave us a "moral victory" speech at the end. Moral vitories suck -- Edwards should have caught that ball.

As for Green -- I've got McNair as a backup and tried to trade him once to the guy with Green. We'll see if he comes back to me.

Two comments:1) James Brown is the best pre-game show host in the business. CBS went from an unwatchable pregame show to the best one around. 2) Carson Palmer and the no huddle is like putting the Colts offense together with the Ravens defense. Marvin Lewis is starting to get his defense going and that no huddle by the Bungles was a pretty site!

Now, the argument is going to continue that Houston absolutely failed by not drafting Reggie Bush.

But let's think about this for a moment: let's say Houston goes 4-12, 6-10 at best this year and gets a top five pick next year. Let's say they use said draft pick on a kid named Adrian Peterson, the best one-cut running back in college right now. Could they not be better off with that pair? I mean, is Reggie Bush even the best fit for their offense?

We should give this a few years to develop before we label the Houston front office as inept. These same criticisms (in a different sport) were thrown at the Minnesota Twins when they took a kid named Joe Mauer over Mark Prior in 2001. Now, they're left with the best catcher in baseball, instead of a pitcher who spends the majority of his time on the DL.

Satisfying day for Iggles fans like me. McNabb-Stallworth looks like peanut butter with jelly. But Brian Baldinger stretched logic to the breaking point in defending the Texans' decision to draft Mario Williams over Reggie Bush. Now whose game highlights will be seen and drooled over this week at least, Brian?

As a Bears fan, I plan on writing Phil Simms to thank him for being the inspiration for Fav-rah's return.

Also, how was the play that took Trent Green out not a penalty? When you slide feet first the QB can't be touched. The worst thing was even the announcers didn't think it was a penalty. Then I flip over to the Seattle - Lions game, watch a similar play take place, and see the penalty called correctly.

Finally, if they are going to call defensive holding so much, they really need to rethink the automatic first down.

blackpot...at several points fox put up a four-camera screen with parcells, del rio, the game shot and owens. this was in addition to countless shots of t.o. screaming at his team, sitting on the bench, staring off into space, etc. as an eagles fan and long time t.o. hater it was almost too painful to watch.

speaking of my eagles...d-mac is well on his way to comeback player of the year honors. lovin' dontae stallworth as our new go-to-guy.

Where was Vince Young in the redzone on that final drive in Tennessee?

As a Titans fan, I'm really not worried about winning that often this year, but I was already excited enough to see the team driving on clutch plays in the final minute. The perfect capper would have been to see Young work his college magic in the pros, and from his earlier drive it seemed like he had the poise to do it. Total let down to see them let Kerry Collins try to run a red zone offense.

As a Broncos fan I don't want to be unreasonable and I know it is only one game for Jake Plummer and Jay Cuttler is only a rookie but at what point is it ok to start to wish he would be the starting QB?

come on, no love for the jags, they came back from 10 down against good dallas defence and leftwich looked pretty good (at least in the second half). if he can do a better job of getting the ball to recievers in the red zone instead underthrowing them he could have a pretty good year. Jags might be better than what people think or dallas may just be overatted

I, too, am mourning the loss of PrimeTime. What a shame. Can't they just do a "Midnight Oasis" edition every week?

Generally, it seems like the offenses are behind the defenses. Lots of pitiful performances from the big stars/fantasy studs - Brady, Palmer, Alexander. Maybe they DO need all those preseason games to get ready...

pass interference call didn't look right, but the illegal snap call on the Giants with 17 seconds left was a good call. Used the dvr to go back, as the broadcast didn't think it was worth showing that play over, and the center did a double snap on the ball. No problem on that call.

The thing that I hated about the false start call at the end was that it essentially limited the Giants to one more play. At the end of a game, certain things should be let go; the Giants certainly didn't gain any advantage, and any advantage they could have possibly gained was far disproportionate to the penalty they received. It's unfortunate that a rule designed to stop teams from having a cheap way to stop the clock was applied in a situation where the clock was about to be stopped!

I wonder how many Frank Gore transactions are there going to be on Monday morning? 87 yds, 2 TDs, and 83 yds receiving!

I'm so glad that there are going to be two MNF games, 7pm ET and 10pm ET. It'll show all the NFL fans how great it is to live on the B(W)est coast to watch sports. The East Coast will finally get to experience what we've long appreciated.

Sucks that they've moved the time to half-hour earlier than we're normally accustomed to. Can someone say, "Tivo"?

I know I'm oversimplifying here, but I noticed an interesting correlation this weekend:

You had Pittsburgh, the defending NFL champs, playing at home, with their difference-making QB out, against a team with an overloaded bandwagon in Miami. Pittsburgh wins. Then you had Texas, the defending NCAA champs, playing at home with their difference-making QB gone, against another team with tons of promise in Ohio State. Texas loses.

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DanShanoff.com is a sports-blog spin-off of my long-time ESPN.com column, "The Daily Quickie." Anchored by an early-morning post of must-know topics, the blog is updated frequently throughout the day with new posts and user comments.